Thonon House

• Date 1977-1978
• Address Rue de Strivay, 7 – 4122 Plainevaux (Neupré)

The Thonon house bears witness to both the continuities and the shifts in the architect’s approach to the single-family home. The client, the owner of a luxury ready-to-wear boutique in Liège and an art lover, commissioned Charles Vandenhove to build a spacious house on his plot – a large, ideally oriented site situated not far from the Repriels house. Unlike the houses built shortly before, the architect departed from the extremely simple layout of the Schoffeniels, Dufays and Schoonbroodt houses to arrange the living spaces in a U-shaped plan. The property, totalling over 400 m², is spread over two levels. The service areas, including the domestic staff’s flat, are situated in the basement and are connected to the ground floor by a spiral staircase that winds around a stainless steel column. On the ground floor, the architect has arranged the bedrooms at either end of the house. To the west, the two children’s bedrooms and the dressing room are adjacent to the bathroom and the kitchen. To the east, the master bedroom is situated next to a bathroom, a dressing room and a large library. In the centre, the spacious living room opens out onto a generous south-facing terrace. As in the Repriels house, Vandenhove emphasises the raw character of the materials, leaving the brick and concrete exposed. Here, however, concrete takes on a more assertive role, particularly in the ceilings composed of prefabricated elements. Similarly, the concrete columns, with their prominent formwork marks, bear witness to the architect’s evolving thinking on the column. This reflection is even more evident in the treatment of the façade, where, once again, the columns form a composition that sees the return of the flat roof. As Bart Verschaffel points out: “Columns and piers do not support a heavy roof, but rather construct the façade, with a prefabricated concrete cladding and a classical projection.”

• Bibliography

  VERSCHAFFEL, Bart, « L’approche architecturale de Charles Vandenhove (1927-2019) » in Bulletin de la Commission royale des Monuments, Sites et Fouilles, t. 32, 2019, p. 17.

  VERSCHAFFEL, Bart, « Charles Vandenhove, œuvres / works / werken 1954-2014 » in Charles Vandenhove Architecture / Architectuur 1954-2014, Tielt, Lannoo, 2014, p. 19.

• AUTHOR AND DATE OF THE ENTRY Sébastien Charlier, 2021